I'm Laura Paxton and I am free.
I
am free to play, to create, to express myself, to explore my world. I
am freer to think and to reason and daydream than I ever have before. I
read more. I have meaningful work that I enjoy very much. I wake up each
day with the joy of purpose before me.
Only
about five years ago, I existed in a cramped, dark apartment where I
had given up on life, agoraphobic, eating mostly chocolate bars for
sustenance and playing online scrabble all day long to keep my mind off
the pain trapped deep inside. How did I end up there?
Let's
face it... I'm autistic. I'm bipolar. I've lived on the dangerous edges
of life. I've been raped, survived a near fatal suicide attempt, was
almost successfully murdered and lived homeless at times in my teens.
Over the course of my life, I've also been taken advantage of, tricked
and abused because of my
poor judgment, (which was poorer than most people's to begin with,
because I'm…